Bookpleasures.comwelcomes as our guest Vicki Salloum author of Candyland and
Faulkner & Friends, and one novella, A Prayer to Saint
Jude. Her most recent novel Waiting For You At Midnight
has just been published.

Vicki's
short fiction has been included in the anthologies When I Am An
Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple; Pass/Fail: 32 Stories About Teaching;
Voices From the Couch; and Umpteen Ways of Looking at a
Possum: Critical and Creative Responses to Everette Maddox. She
holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge. Vicki lives in New Orleans

Norm:
How did you get started in writing? What keeps you going and why do
you write? Do you have a theme, message, or goal for your books?

Vicki:
I was in my late thirties when I started writing fiction. Before
that, I was a staff writer for three newspapers. One day, I was
working at my typewriter with a blank sheet of paper in it. I wanted
to write my first short story—my first piece of fiction. I had no
expertise, no knowledge of what to do. It’s just that I loved to
read fiction and wanted to try my hand at writing it.

I’ll
never forget how inadequate I felt with that blank sheet of paper
before me. Somehow I got out one sentence and then another and
another. And, finally, I managed to finish the story.

What
kept me going through all the years of terrible fiction writing and
rejections and failure? Faith and hope. Some people become so
obsessed with what they love to do they can’t stop doing it. That
was me. It would have been soul killing to stop. So I kept taking
creative writing classes year after year until I developed a
proficiency at it. And, yes, I always search for the themes in my
novels.

John
Gardner once wrote that in all great fiction, primary emotion—our
emotion, the character’s emotion—must sooner or later lift off
from the particular and be transformed to an expression of what is
universally good in human life. That universal statement, he wrote,
is likely to be too subtle to be expressed in any way but the story’s
way. I keep working until I discover what that universal statement
is in my work and then try to bring it out so that others will
discover it.

Norm:
In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of the writing
process?

Vicki:
The most difficult part of the writing process when I am writing
literary fiction is to adhere to a structural form that will capture
readers’ attention and compel them to keep turning the page. The
central character must be an agent struggling for her own goals.
There should be internal conflict that propels the story forward, a
moral choice, a climactic moment, and final outcome. Just as
important, a writer should understand her main character deeply
before characterizing her. And she should tell her story in concrete
terms, not just abstractions. All of this takes concentration and is
not easy to do.

Norm:
How many times in your career have you experienced rejection? How
did they shape you?

Vicki:
Rejection has been a huge part of my writing experience. In the
early years of writing short stories, I used to keep the most
memorable rejection slips in my file cabinet. I rarely took them
personally, and I didn’t allow them to permanently discourage me.
Instead, I chose to learn from them. I saw them as a challenge to
push me to work harder to be a better writer.

Norm:
What did you find most useful in learning to write?

Vicki:
Honestly, when I think of what helped me most to learn to write, I
think about the advice of successful writers who came before me. In
his book On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner wrote that when
the central character is a victim, not someone who does but someone
who’s done to, there can be no real suspense.

Real
suspense comes from moral dilemma and the courage to make and act
upon choices. George Garrett said that above everything
else—language, style, etc.—there has to be about the story
something that really matters a lot to people. It can’t be
contrived. And if it really matters enough, it can override other
flaws and defects. And in reading books about Flannery O’Connor,
I’ve taken seriously the advice she has reportedly given other
writers. She said that a good story is one that comes from the
heart. She also advised setting aside three hours each morning in
which to write and do nothing else. I could go on and on. Nothing
has been more useful than the advice of these great masters.

Norm:
Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the
two? Please summarize your writing process.

Vicki:
I work more by intuition than by logic. I completely trust the
unconscious mind to carry me from the beginning of a piece to its
conclusion.

Logic
plays an indispensable part, but I don’t get deadly serious about
logical thinking until I have completed a sloppy first draft. This
is how I work: I start out jotting down on lined notebook paper
whatever comes to me to write about.

The
more I write, the more I get into a dream-like state where the story
begins to unfold and the plot begins to move to moments of
understanding. When I have a rough draft finished, in which I have
dramatized in the simplest form a beginning, middle and end using
sensory imagery, I type it in the computer, print it out, and take it
to a coffee house to revise.

The
revision process can go on for years. It is in the process of
repeated revisions that I get an understanding of what the work is
really, deeply about, what the moral choice is in the story. When
the revision process is finished—when I cease being in that
dreamlike state and cease working from the unconscious mind, then I
start using my intellect to work on technique and craft. I have
prepared questions I ask myself in an effort to make sure the theme
has been fully emphasized—to make sure the “moral soul,” as I
call it, is there. After that, I have a blank book in which I’ve
collected vocabulary words over the years. I go through my book
looking for words I can substitute for the ones I’ve used in my
drafts—words that may be lyrical or give deeper meaning the story.
Months later, I’ll read the manuscript a final time and, if the
words don’t move, I’ll know that it is finished.

Norm:
What served as the primary inspiration for Waiting for You at
Midnight and who was your intended audience?

Vicki:
My husband was the primary inspiration for Waiting for You at
Midnight. After he died, I had no one with whom I could talk to
honestly about my thoughts and feelings and about what was going on
in my life in the months following his death. So I started writing
to him. He had been my best friend, and it was very natural to
“talk” to him.

These
diary notes, I guess you could call them, became the material for
Waiting for You at Midnight. I eventually changed the
real-life people and day-to-day events to imaginary ones. The novel
is about loss—the loss of someone who loves you and cherishes you
and understands you and knows your history, the loss of youth, the
loss of physical beauty. Only after I finished it did I think about
who would be my intended audience. I thought that the people who
might be helped by my book would be people like myself, who were
devastated and grief-stricken and searching for a meaningful new
life.

Norm:
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do
you feel you achieved them? As a follow up, what do you hope will be
the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book?

Vicki:
Any individual who has never been through what the narrator,
Arabella, went through would find it hard to understand how intense
grief can be, how it manifests itself, and how long it can endure.
It is only when you experience it yourself that you realize—in your
aloneness—that you are stuck with the problem of what to do with
it.

How
to get rid of the constant emotional pain. How to occupy your days
so that your life has a purpose. How to feel peace. And joy. And
how do you do all these things when you are so muddled in your
thinking and overcome with sadness that you can barely wash your face
in the morning? And how do you find the strength to make a triumph
of your life? That is most what you want to do. So my intention in
writing this book was to examine a soul in turmoil. And my hope was
that it would lead anyone reading Waiting for You at Midnight to
discover that the greatest spiritual growth can often come as a
result of tragedy along with a new appreciation of how beautiful life
is and how joyous it can be.

Norm:
How did you go about creating Arabella and is there much of you in
her character?

Vicki:
This book is part autobiography and part imagination. Most of the
characters and events in the book are products of the imagination,
but the narrator Arabella’s conflict—her crushing emotional needs
in conflict with the workings of her moral intelligence—mirrors
that of the author in the wake of her husband’s death.

Norm:
It is said that writers should write what they know. Were there any
elements of the book that forced you to step out of your comfort
zone, and, if so, how did you approach this part of the writing?

Vicki:
For other novels I’ve written, I have chosen subjects I knew
nothing about. They presented challenges of the imagination and the
opportunity for exhaustive research. Waiting for You at Midnight
was not that kind of book. I wrote it as a tribute to my husband, a
chance to say goodbye to him a final time.

I
knew everything about him, and the challenge was to capture the
essence and spirit of him and the meaning of his life on earth. My
focus was on him and our time together and I wanted to create an
honest portrayal. But there is another part of this. I also wanted
to make sense of the spiritual odyssey that begins for a caregiver
after a loved one dies. So I had my narrator—the widow in the
story—ask the hard questions and dissect her new relationships and
question the activities that took place in her life with brutal
honesty in an attempt to understand who she was, what she wanted for
the rest of her life, and how to go about getting it. I wrote what I
knew. But there were many things I didn’t know that I wanted to
find out.

Norm:
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

Vicki:
I enjoyed the rawness and dark, ugly truths that poured out of this
narrator’s head. It was as if the central character was some
tortured soul writing down her most private thoughts in a diary and
thinking no one will read them and yet everybody was reading them.
I’m so tired of political correctness and putting one’s best foot
forward and guarding what one says to protect ourselves against what
others will think of us. This narrator went raging against the dying
of the light to keep her soul alive. She had no time to waste on
pretense.

Norm:
What would you like to say to writers who are reading this interview
and wondering if they can keep creating, if they are good enough, if
their voices and visions matter enough to share?

Vicki:
There are people in this world who were born to create and they have
to do it or their spirits will die. For those people, I say: Just
do it! Create your heart out! Don’t worry about whether or not
you are good enough. If you work hard enough at it, you will be good
enough. I would just hate for you to stop creating before the
miracle happens. But that I mean that one day, if you do not give
up, the work that you have created may possibly be of great value to
others and live on long after you die. Who are you to say this will
not happen? And what have you to lose by trying?

Norm:
Are you working on any books/projects that you would like to share
with us? (We would love to hear all about them!)

Vicki:
I have one novel and a collection of short stories that still
haven’t been published. I would like to concentrate on finding
good homes for them. Beyond that, it remains to be seen what my next
novel will be about, though I’m pretty sure I will write another.
And the thought came to me the other day that I might try my hand at
teaching fiction writing on a volunteer basis to children or adults.
It dawned on me that four of my novels have been published and
countless short stories. Surely I know something that would perhaps
help a beginner writer. But just because a writer knows how to write
doesn’t mean she knows how to teach. So we’ll have to see about
that.

Norm:
Where can our readers find out more about you and Waiting for You
at Midnight?

Vicki:
A book excerpt, my bio, and reviews of my book are posted on my WEBSITE. My e-mail address is also posted on
that website if anyone would be interested in writing to me. I
promise I’ll write back. And I have reviews and an Author’s Page
on both Amazon and Goodreads. Finally, if anyone happens to be in
that neck of the woods around November 10th, drop by theLouisiana
Book Festival in Baton Rouge, where I’ll be one of the author
participants. I’d love to meet you, say hi, and talk about books
and writing.

Norm:
As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that
someone would ask about Waiting for You at Midnight, but nobody has?

Vicki:
I guess I would want them to ask: What is this book really about?
I would answer that by saying it is about more than a widow’s
grief. It’s about the search for an authentic self. The narrator
Arabella realizes there are two people living inside of her. One is
the woman who was raised by a traditional, conservative family and
who has taken on the values and customs of that family. The other is
a free-thinking bohemian who falls in love with back-street guys.
But she finds that she doesn’t belong in either world. When
Arabella is caring for the dying Logan, she feels death closing in
around her and, after he dies, she is in a panic to seize joy. She
realizes how precious life is—and fleeting—and she wants
desperately to shed the falseness of her former self and discover who
she genuinely is and learn how to live an honest life.

Norm:
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. It's
been an absolute pleasure to meet with you and read your work. Good
luck with Waiting
For You At Midnight.